Thursday, 19 February 2009

Ma Yingjiu interview - check it out

I have to admit that lately I have not been following Taiwanese affairs as closely as I used to, but on a recent perusal through the Taipei Times I came across this extremely interesting interview with Taiwanese President Ma Yingjiu, money quote:

Taipei Times: Do you think Taiwan is a normal country?

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九): The Taiwanese people elect their own president and legislature and govern themselves. Do you think that is normal or not normal?

You see, to my mind a lot of the doom and gloom about Ma Yingjiu being ready to sell Taiwan out to the mainland has never made much sense. Even on the cynical interpretation of Ma's actions - why would he plot to give away the powers which he enjoys as president?

1 comment:

Cueball
said...

The problem may be that Ma himself is not in full control and that the KMT old guard are making the deals behind closed doors - Ma, like a good dog, then just rubber-stamps them. The old guard don't see Taiwan as being worthy enough to rule. They're hoping for a chance to make a deal with the CCP and get political influence in China.

Perhaps that's overly pessimistic, but go on and read the whole interview. Why does the KMT still regard the ROC as being all of China and/or still say it wants unification? Why also does it say that legislative review is enough to ensure all agreements won't lead to unification by the back-door, when it is controlled by the KMT?

Or maybe a simpler explanation is that Ma is desperate to do something about the economy so will sell the country's soul to China in the hope he'll get re-elected by a better economic outlook (but before people decide too much influence has been given to Beijing). After all he can only be president for two terms - why should he care about what happens afterwards?

Again that's pessimistic but why the rush to enter a free trade agreement with China when the effect of its agreements with ASEAN won't start until 2011 or so?